Blindly Believing: Fixed Notions

We, like the insect world of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, have fixed ideas. Whether they help us or not, we learned certain things, believe them and follow them blindly. It makes us not much better than bugs. Here’re some of the crazy things insects do:

The FIXED notions of Chapter 4: “The Fixed.”

Certain caterpillars starve to death because instinct has them following each other around and around a flower pot rim. Their food is inches away.

Male praying mantises mate even though they know they will have their heads eaten by their spouse.

Dragonflies at La Brea Tar Pits will stick their stomachs into the tar to see if it’s water. IF they manage to escape, they do it again. And Again.

Aren’t you glad you’re not a bug?

However, we’ve got a few fixed, biblical notions of our own.

Angels are female. Nope. All angels named in the Bible are male.

Angels sang at Christmas. Nope. If you do a Strongs study of the word ‘spoke,’ which is the word the Bible uses in the Christmas announcements, spoke means: to speak.

Jesus died on a Friday. Nope. He spent three days and three nights in the grave. (Matt. 12:40), ergo, Friday doesn’t give enough time. If we look at the Feasts of Israel, we find several feasts days line up together at the Passover. Where they fall varies from year to year. So the Sabbath they talked about when He hung on the cross wasn’t Saturday.

And that brings us to today.

COVID-19 rages. People we love suffer, many die. Some pundits shake their fingers and say, “God is punishing sin.” Some of those “experts” name specific sins.

The truth is, bad things happen–not because a person is a horrid sinner, but because we live in a broken world.

Five-year-olds, young fathers, saintly ministers die. Not because they sinned but because in life, we’re not promised a hundred years. We know, from conception, the person conceived is on her way to dying. (reassuring topic, no?)

In Luke 13:4, Jesus asks if those who died when the Tower of Siloam fell were any more sinful than those who escaped. The rhetorical question presents the obvious answer: no.

In John 9:1-12, Jesus heals a man blind from birth. His disciples asked who sinned. Jesus’s answer?

No one.

As the coronavirus rages, what should we as Christians do?

Show the love and compassion of Jesus Christ.

Do not judge.

Make sure we relish the things in life that are most important: family, friends, faith.

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